


Impact Damage and a Catalog of Restoration

by Sovin



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Artist Grantaire, Character(s) of Color, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy, Other, Past Drug Use, Past criminal activity, Pining, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:59:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1403962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sovin/pseuds/Sovin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been five years, and Grantaire has friends and a life and the start of something with Enjolras, even, but he's haunted by the paintings he's forged and the demons that catalog themselves in his brain. But he's trying, and perhaps that counts for something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impact Damage and a Catalog of Restoration

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory disclaimer.
> 
> Impact Damage: Multiple losses, abrasions, tears, etc. from a major impact.
> 
>  
> 
> Well, shit, this got a lot longer than I expected it to. Have some former art criminal Grantaire and friendship. A lot of friendship. And overuse of color. But with characters of color and with disability! And Enjolras and Grantaire being cute dorks.
> 
> Please let me know if there are any tags (especially for triggers) that you think ought to be added and I'll happily do so.
> 
> I'm always happy to chat over on my tumblr (or inbox!), so feel free to say [hello](http://www.sovinly.tumblr.com)!

Grantaire is fairly certain that even after almost four years, most of Les Amis don’t know what to make of his and Éponine’s friendship.

He knows it must look strange from the outside, because they move with a seamless synchronization, back to back and hyperaware of one another, but they aren’t actually that close. When he’s so drunk he nearly forgets how to breathe, it’s Éponine’s couch he sleeps on, and when she’s so angry she can’t speak, she breaks her fury against the weight of Grantaire’s eyes. But Éponine prefers to run out with her own friends and Grantaire gossips away with Joly and Bossuet. They don’t run to tell one another about dates or jobs or strokes of fortune, occasionally forgetting to mention those sorts of things for months, but they can take one look at the other and know in an instant when something is wrong and what. Well, Grantaire thinks, let them keep a few of their secrets.

And so he’s not surprised at all when Éponine waltzes into the Musain after their meeting but before Grantaire can seduce the others to revelry and drinking.

She bypasses Enjolras airily but with a nod of respect before dropping down beside Grantaire, fishing a small cake out of her bag and setting it in front of him. “For you. Congratulations.”

“What’s this?” Joly asks, eyes brightening as he sits up straighter. “ ‘Ponine, is this your way of telling us when R’s birthday is?”

Éponine snorts and tosses her hair while Grantaire, giving her an affectionate smile for five years of freedom, turns to Joly, “She doesn’t actually know when it is either.”

“That’s true,” she admits, thoughtful. “I really don’t.”

“I am a man of mystery,” Grantaire agrees cheerfully, snagging the strap of his bag with his foot and lifting it up enough to catch the handle, rummaging through it until he finds what he’s looking for, pulling out a package with a flourish and offering it to her. “And this is for you.”

She examines it before undoing the paper, and then blinks at the spill of deeply colored, silky cloth in her hands, arching a brow at Grantaire. “The fuck’s this?”

“It’s eggplant, it’s your color,” he drawls, waving a hand. “Go on, try it, princess.”

That makes her snort again, but she obligingly wraps the scarf around her neck and flips out a mirror, letting out a pleased hum at the color of the scarf against the russet-bronze tones of her skin, dark eyes softening as she kicks Grantaire lightly. “Yeah, okay, I’ll take it.”

“I always forget how good you are with colors,” Bossuet comments, as Grantaire lightly smacks Joly’s hand away from his cake with a good natured grumble before relenting, shrugging as he glances over.

“Yes, well, what does it matter?” he asks with a bit of a grin. “After all, we know what color everything will be with our fearless leader in charge.”

That gets a laugh, and only Éponine seems to notice that he distracts them and dances the topic around to something else entirely, and he gives her a smile, trying to fill it up with all of his gratitude and understanding and sorrow and _pride_ in her and them and how far they’ve come. She smiles back, kicks at his foot again, and steals a bite of his cake.

It’s only later that they talk, ducking out early and wandering the dark streets of Paris, winding slowly and quietly through its mazes.

“I can’t believe,” she says, feet never tripping over stray stones or uneven gaps, her eyes trained up and up and up on the tops of the buildings and the sky that never quite manages to be black, “that we’re still alive, you and I. I remember you, R.”

“And I remember you, ‘Ponine, and here we are,” he replies, and for the first time in a very long time, his fingers itch for a brush and paint, but he makes do with pulling out his phone and taking a picture of her, her head tipped back and dark hair artlessly tumbling around her shoulders, lit up by the street lamps.

He thinks she is beautiful like this, and his heart is warm when she just reaches over to touch his shoulder, still the only person allowed to do that so freely, and the night parts before them like a gateway to some new and strange universe.

And after that night, they are back to normal, back to the world as it is, and Grantaire just lets the knowledge settle inside him with the rest of the only numbers he remembers, the dates that spin slowly out in his mind. He’s nearly forgotten by the time he enters the Musain a handful of days later and Courfeyrac corners him.

“My friend,” he says, with a smile like a cat, leaning into Grantaire’s personal space until he catches the instinctive bristling and accommodatingly shifts back just enough that it’s not uncomfortable. “I hear Éponine brought you cake. Is there something we should know?”

“Yes,” he says dryly, because clear and joking lies are better than a refusal to give the truth. “We were celebrating the tenth anniversary of our tax benefits marriage. Of course, we don’t get them anymore since we live apart, but it’s good cover for when she goes to the bar and doesn’t want to get hit on, so we haven’t divorced yet.”

Courfeyrac snorts at that, but is still studying him intently, probing. “Uh-huh. And this really had absolutely not a thing to do with your birthday? Seriously, we _are_ just going to pick a date and celebrate it if you don’t tell us. Or, like, a new job-thing?”

Grantaire shakes his head, thankful that this time it’s an easy truth. “Not a thing to do with it, on my honor. I really don’t celebrate it, and if you try to, I will get horrifically drunk and start pontificating in Latin like I did last year. Not a new job-thing either.”

He sighs after a moment, reaches over to pat Grantaire’s shoulder. “R, if you really don’t want things like that, it’s okay, but… We care about you. We _like_ you. And we want to be able to celebrate with you when good things are going on in your life. We like being happy for you.”

“Thanks,” he says, patting Courfeyrac’s shoulder in return and giving him a smile. “Really, thank you. But I promise it was just Éponine and me being ourselves this time.”

After a moment, he sighs as if he’s not sure whether to push, only to be called away by Combeferre, and Grantaire slouches more in his little back corner, brooding quietly over his drink. He is still paralyzed with fear, still as afraid of so many dead end possibilities as the night he slipped out the attic window at fifteen. He’s got eleven years and as much perspective, and he’s just as afraid of losing everything all over again.

He sees the flickers of it every day. The curious looks when he flips from recognizing something that just marks him as upper-middle class to making Bahorel’s last five dollars stretch until his next cheque, when he goes from making Classical references that would make a doctoral student weep to accidentally implying he never attended a lycée. The way they note his flinches or the subjects that get too close to riling him up. The threat of it, that they will somehow, at some point discover what he’s hidden, makes him almost sick with fear.

Cosette glances over from where she has been debating something with Jehan, and tips her head at him. Grantaire shakes his in reply, but she still offers him a sympathetic, encouraging smile. It should make things worse, but it is impossible not to like Cosette. She doesn’t know everything, of course, but Éponine told him when they first ran into one another what Cosette’s story was. Cosette and Grantaire had shared a long, long look, heavy with some unknown mechanism of testing one another, and it was enough to know that they understood, the both of them, the three of them, the tyranny of the Thénardiers and poverty.

And, to her credit, she’s never breathed a word to the others, not even Enjolras, with whom she is oddly close. But she is their friend as well, and Grantaire thinks he is in some ways closer to her than to Éponine, because they share something of a kind, something of the wildness and the cunning of the fleeing fox between them.

But he’s getting distracted, as he does. He looks back down at the table and traces the eddies of the grain with absent eyes. Too many things itch under his skin, and he is afraid that he will give into one of them or more, and tightens the hold on his bottle and lets the world spin on.

The thing of it, really, is that Grantaire can almost forget, sometimes. He almost forgets the knife strapped against his thigh, the way it slides easy into his hand. (He tells them he learned single-stick as another of his historical larks, but really, it’s just as much for when he needs a last ditch weapon). He almost forgets what it was like growing up, despised and isolated. (He fucks up the calculation of printing costs because he just doesn’t get math, and instinctively recoils like a gun-kick from Combeferre’s reassuring hand).

Worst, he sometimes almost forgets about art. He sometimes lets himself indulge in the admiration of marble carved to delicate whisps of fabric or gasps breathlessly over something American and so obscure the guilt doesn’t roil in his stomach. (His mind and his hand recall daubing oil on canvas and learning the intricacies of reverse-restoring and he crumples like a caryatid and shutters closed).

So he fills up his time. He goes faithfully to the meetings of Les Amis and tags along after Enjolras like Echo after Narcissus (if only Narcissus had fallen for Patria instead of his reflection), and he works his shitty job, and he teaches dancing to people with the light of the world in their laughter, and what’s leftover he crams up with boxing and practice fighting and sometimes fighting that is real and attempting something like sleep. If there’s anything left, and there is, always, he shoves drink into the remaining spaces, lets it fill him up in every nook and every cranny.

It’s so hard, still, and he struggles like he’s on a precipice every day.

But he loves his friends fiercely and dearly, and most of the time, it’s enough. They lift some of the weight from his shoulders with their smiles, and each day gets a little easier. And that’s how he finds himself tsking over Combeferre’s proposed new suit, even if he’s not sure how he ended up on this particular expedition.

“No,” he says, reaching for a different suit jacket and half spinning to select a tie in a dusky purple, offering them out to the man. “That doesn’t suit the lines of your shoulder. This one’s modern but classic, not conservative, and the purple will accent your skin tone nicely.”

“How?” Courfeyrac asks him, as Combeferre acquiesces with a tentative thoughtfulness. “How do you know these things? _I_ don’t know these things – I mean, sort of, but-”

“Oh, I knew a guy who had great fashion sense,” Grantaire says before he can think better of it, but for the first time in years, the memory of Montparnasse doesn’t hurt. It should sting, the memory of the young man who could have followed him and Éponine, but who took his beauty and his danger and eyed up, not out. He does not mention, though, that Montparnasse would have vetoed the suit based on an inability to hide his preferred weapon.

When Combeferre steps out, he looks stately and stunning.

Grantaire waves off his thanks, because he doesn’t need them, really. It was nice to have been able to just pick something based on colors for once, to use his eye for them without feeling shame. They keep telling him, when it comes up, that he could do something with this, but he laughs them off because he has no interest in fashion consulting (Except that Bossuet wants to make Musichetta and Joly light up when they go out, and Jehan doesn’t understand the difference between complementary and clashing).

So he keeps to favors, small ones, and plays games with it. He can never turn off the part of his brain that sees them as art, his friends, whether that’s inspired or trite, and he aches for a brush like he aches for – no.

Sometimes, when he sleeps, the nightmare is of a paintbrush in his hand.

Autumn drifts away with the last of the leaves, their roaring reds leeching to flaming yellows and ember oranges and finally to nothing. On their heels, Christmas falls and Paris is silent, for a moment, transfixed in cold and silent air. The others have left the city – even Éponine, who has let Bahorel whisk her and Feuilly up north.

Grantaire has nearly forgotten what alone feels like and remembers, suddenly, in the biting cold and snapping isolation, why he let his brush begin to follow the lines of others. But he is not alone, and his count of days does not reset, because Enjolras stays as well, and apparently is bored enough to seek him out.

He turns up three days before Christmas, and startles Grantaire with a knock on his door. He stumbles up to answer it, abandoning the warm comfort of his couch, and blinks to find Enjolras there, wrapped up against the cold, nose just peeking over the folds of his scarf. There is nothing for it, because he is helpless in the face of Enjolras (even if he no longer worships and fears the marble of his altar like he does art, because gods do not sprawl upside down in their friend’s chairs with a book and their hair in messy ponytails), and Grantaire lets him in.

They settle in with carry out Lebanese that Enjolras brought as either a peace offering or a bribe, and Grantaire makes some coffee to complement it, and it should be awkward, but they are too cold or too tired or too lonely to let it be stiff.

“I never understood art,” Enjolras admits after a while, pale cheeks flushing a little as he does, sheepish. He looks lovely like this, his curls like shavings of gold accenting his fine cheekbones, normally quiet mouth tipped up in something that’s nearly a smile. “I once lost points in my art course for not understanding the use of color, which made me furious.”

Grantaire laughs, shakes his head, all but feels his eyes go fond. “That, Enjolras, is because you think of colors as symbols, like everything else.”

“What other way is there?” he asks, and looks genuinely curious, not offended.

“You think your favorite color is red,” he tells him, pointing at him with his fork. “Really, you just feel like it should be because it stands for revolution, for passion, for anger, and it has the associations with leftist politics that you like and make use of. And, to be fair, it’s divine with your coloring. But the color you prefer most is actually a soft, blue toned celadon green.”

Enjolras stops, like he’s suddenly reevaluating Grantaire entirely. “… I think you may be right. How did you know?”

“You pick something like it every time there’s a reason you can’t use red,” he says, shrugging. “Even if it doesn’t go with anything at all. And your favorite scarf is that color, even though it’s not as soft as that cashmere monstrosity Courfeyrac gave you.”

That makes him pause for a moment, considering, and then he smiles, and Grantaire can’t regret that at all. The topic shifts again, and he is amazed that Enjolras is letting him ramble, letting them flow from one subject to the next on the hairpin turns of Grantaire’s associative brain.

“I had a sister,” Grantaire finds himself saying several hours later and really, what?, because he’s not mentioned her to anyone in years. Éponine, once or twice, and never with any depth, but no one else.

“Oh?” Enjolras looks curious and a little surprised, but it’s nothing like Grantaire feels.

“Her name’s Aurélie,” he says, and turns the subject away again, and there’s a little whisper in the corner of his mind that wonders again what happened to her, where she might be even if she is alive. He could look her up, perhaps, but what would there be to say? It’s been too long and too far away, so he lets it go.

But tonight must be a night of revelations, because in between the occasional tidbit on his family, Enjolras pauses thoughtfully, then looks almost sheepish, almost proud, and leans forward a touch to confess.“I’d prefer you not mention to the others because I would get endless grief, but I tried running away once, when I was eleven. I took my toothbrush and my French history book and snuck out the kitchen door. It was a terrible rebellion, it lasted forty-five minutes until I realized I had no money and it was nearly time for lunch.”

Grantaire laughs, because he can just see stubborn, dandelion-headed Enjolras righteously striking out to protest a ten o’clock bedtime, but his heart hurts for a moment. What would this man have been, if he’d followed through, if he’d been older? He is desperately, painfully grateful that Enjolras was spared the fall from grace, the tarnishing of idealism that Grantaire found on the stones of the streets.

And then it’s late enough that Enjolras reluctantly takes his leave, with a promise to meet him for lunch late in the afternoon, and Grantaire stares at the ceiling all night, unable to see anything but stolen brushstrokes and a younger, rounder face haloed with blond.

He’s exhausted the next morning and they argue all through their lunch, and they continue arguing through the movie they watch on Enjolras’ couch, but it’s a good debate, never quite crosses the line into something hurtful, and this, this is nice. It’s how they spend the rest of their time until everyone returns, and Grantaire will forever be grateful that he’s had this, at least.

Like snow on the rooftops, things settle back to normal and it’s welcome. It’s welcome, because suddenly Grantaire is staring down the end of eleven years since he accepted a warm hand in the cold streets, before he knew what he would trade for survival. He’s forgotten, nearly, what it was like to love painting for its own sake, what it was like to not be addicted. He has forgotten, entirely, what it felt like to never be waiting for an attack to come (he’s not sure that he ever knew – they said he was a natural, but he thinks the threat of pain is one he’s always known).

He doesn’t call Éponine, who remembers him fresh faced and unaware. He doesn’t call Cosette, who understands what you become when you’re among them. He doesn’t call Joly and Bossuet, who always cheer him up. He calls Bahorel, and fights until his knuckles and his brain ache, but he trusts himself to sleep through the night.

Sometimes he misses it, and that’s the worst, because it took attention and talent to pick apart the details of how people painted, the way their hands moved over canvases, how they blended colors, how to flourish in just the right way, and it took talent to make it look real, to make it look as aged or new as it needed to be, and he misses it. It would figure, that the one thing Grantaire is good at is theft.

But he survived and he survives, tries not think of how fencing feels nothing like the angle of a knife in his hand, how the flourishes of penmanship are nothing like the flow of paints. A birthmark splashes over the line of his thumb and index finger like watercolors tattooed into his skin, and it seems to mock him.

It's hardly all bad, anymore. Grantaire feels lighter, most days, because he's trying, he is. And one night, as he’s watching Cosette and Courfeyrac tease Marius while Joly and Bossuet and Musichetta provide commentary, he laughs, only to find Éponine suddenly hugging him fiercely.

"I've never heard you laugh like that," she says, and she looks vehemently, viciously proud of him. "Ever. Fuck, R, the meds are really helping, huh?"

"They are," he agrees, and he can allow that, because the antidepressants help him breathe and the remorse is his shroud but the fog that's clouded his brain ever since he can remember (eight and wishing desperately that he didn't exist) has lifted a little, enough. Then he smiles, and kisses her forehead, because Éponine doesn't care that anyone is watching, has finally let her guard down, and he is just as proud of her. "And I've never seen you so happy."

They share a look, the one that's a helpless, breathless "how did we get here?", and it makes every hard night worth it. He remembers when they left, how they decided to keep their names because that was all they had left and her father could fuck off. As it turns out, Thénardier and his cronies couldn't take their resilience or their happiness, either. It is a good feeling.

He never lets himself touch paint, or even charcoal, but if Grantaire's grocery lists are suddenly in calligraphy, well, no one but him will know. So he relaxes, just a little. Never enough to put away the knife, never enough to pick up a brush, but enough to be a little freer, a little easier. Enough to tell Joly, in passing, about a truly amusing incident with a bed sheet and a cat when he was five, and enough to tell Bossuet about a horribly botched test just before he ran away. Enough to tell Bahorel most of the story behind the scar on his hip, and enough to let Cosette doodle on his arm even with the marks. Enough to talk to Enjolras and keep him company, rather than simply tearing away his ideals.

And then there's the news. If he had known, if it had broken a few hours earlier, Grantaire would have stayed home and played sick. But instead, he is at the Musain with Les Amis (Éponine is not there) when it comes up, art fraud on a grand scale, someone cheated out of their money for a painting that's fake. Enjolras is furious, his face flushed and blue eyes glinting like gunmetal.

"How can people live with themselves?" he spits after they’ve had their moment to process the articles. "To, to copy another’s work for the sake of cheating others! There's nothing of value in it and it's all for petty, Capitalistic gain. It's a dirty way to do things.”

“Intellectual plagiarism at its worst,” Jehan agrees, usually soft mouth hardening in a disapproving line while Combeferre’s forehead creases, clearly searching for the words to express why this bothers him so much. There are a few more murmurs of agreement, and then Enjolras’ catch on the back corner, and he probably intends to look curious but there’s too much fury in each tense line of his limbs and spine.

“You like art, don’t you, Grantaire? What do you think?”

Grantaire wants to cry. He wants to die. He wants the earth to swallow him whole, to be struck by lightning. His face is a mask, distorted and grotesque, and he slumps into the shadows more, voice biting and cynical.

"That's people for you, Enjolras. They are petty and thieving and bitter, they'll sell their souls for a sou. People like that, well, they care for nothing, they're disgraceful, but what more can you expect?" he replies, and he means, I am petty and thieving, and I sold my soul for a moldy corner and food, and I enjoyed it, and you should despise me.

They must take it for his pessimism and cynicism, and the conversation turns away from him soon enough. Grantaire avoids the weight of Cosette's eyes (Has she guessed? Might she know?), and waits just long enough for them to forget him before he slips out the back. He is jittery, he is a black hole that devours, he aches, he wants to die. His thumb rubs the crook of his arm. He texts Éponine.

<<Three years, three months, one week, and three days. Don’t want to start over again.>>

There's not even a minute delay.

<<I'll be over in fifteen minutes. R, don’t. Please.>>

It would take him twenty minutes to find something to dull his mind, to drag him all the way back to the creature he was before.

It takes him ten minutes to walk home.

Éponine is there four minutes later and pours him a drink, listens to him talk in the pressed rush of panic, offers him a cigarette, doesn't even judge him when he drinks so much not even he can stand. She takes his phone and turns it off, drinks with him, sits up with him all night, watching his hands clench and unclench around the pillow he's holding against his body. She never says a word about how close he's come to relapsing.

Grantaire falls asleep twice and wakes up in almost no time at all, his brain boiling itself up with memories since he refuses to do so with chemicals. She’s there both times, watches him shudder and shake with the force of it all, and only touches him when he asks, when he permits. Eventually she sends him to shower the panic-sweat from his skin and he emerges to food and coffee, and he’s almost back to sober.

“Thank you,” he says, finally, breaking the silence after they’ve eaten, not yet moving to do the dishes, and he feels like he’s maybe going to ride this out somehow.

She shakes her head. “Nah. Shit, last month you sat watch for two nights in a row because my paranoia flared up when I saw someone who reminded me of Babet. I can handle a night of keeping you from finding something else to kill your soul with. Favor, though?”

“Anything,” he promises, but there’s something wrecked and wretched to it – he has so little to offer, so little left to give.

Éponine’s dark eyes are demanding, see straight through him. “Call your counselor.”

Grantaire does. He still spends a week under the covers, unable to move or do anything, turned to stone by self-loathing and disgust. But he forces himself up, eventually, tries to remind himself that he’s stopped what he used to do in more ways than one. He feels shaken and tossed from every dearly won inch of progress.

By the time he makes it back to the meetings, he’s lost weight, dark bags under his eyes, and his hands are shaking. But he owes Éponine even more than he already does, because she’s texted some of them that he was having something of a mental health crisis, so they’re concerned but they don’t demand to know anything. It helps, Grantaire thinks, that they’ve seen this before.

Still, he accepts the concern and affection, glad that no one asks what triggered it, that no one tells him how glad they are that he can tell them what’s going on (after too many years of coming up with any other excuse than that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, that hatred pressed him into the mattress like an iron anchor on his back). It’s almost too much, their affection, because they might hate him if they knew. There’s no might, not really. His past is, he is antithetical to all they believe in.

Bahorel seems to recognize the look on his face, but he simply squeezes Grantaire’s shoulder, a firm reminder that (as far as he knows), whatever shadowy monster Grantaire’s brain has cooked up has no grasp on reality, and Grantaire is too thankful to protest. He manages something that is not quite a smile but is sincerely grateful, and listens unusually quietly to Courfeyrac’s passionate indictment of American Imperialism as expressed through the clothing industry.

He still just listens when it breaks down into discussions and debates, and no one seems willing to push him, so Grantaire just listens, and feels like he did a year into all of this, like it would inevitably end and he was worthless and that all he could do was desperately drink in their love and passion and idealism and friendship before he fell again. His reverie is broken by Enjolras slipping into the seat beside him.

“How are you, Grantaire?” he asks, and his eyes are easy with genuine concern (they usually are, for his friends, and for some reason he is counted as one of them).

There’s no sense in trying for anything but a ghost of a smile. “Have to balance out my drunken revels with an equally Dionysian descent of madness, you know. I’ll be on the flip side soon enough.”

Enjolras studies him with that eagle sharp stare, but he’s long since given up trying to dictate the terms of Grantaire’s mental health and finally settles on a soft, “Well. I’ve missed your company and your insights.”

Grantaire feels like crying at the unfairness of the world, but he nudges the other man very lightly in the arm. Enjolras’ hatred would be swift and terrible, but he doesn’t think he could ever bring himself to admit what he’s done.

“Less fun without your token voice of dissent?” he teases. “No, really, thank you. I’ve missed yours as well.”

He can tell that the self deprecation rankles Enjolras , but he only smiles a little more, and Grantaire, pathetic, lets it warm him like sunshine.

It’s not like they forget; they’re careful with him for a few weeks. But they’ve been his friends long enough that they let it go, and Grantaire slowly tries his way back to equilibrium. It’s a month before he gets a good night of sleep, waking up with his fingers curled for a paintbrush or a needle or a knife. But the nightmares start to space themselves out again and he can breathe, manages to convince himself that (until or unless they find out) he has friends. It’s only taken them four years to pound it into his brain. Considering his track record, this is actually pretty good.

Cosette is the only one who mentions it, stepping into the quiet studio as he dismisses his class, and her eyes look too intent for him to brush her off. “Would you like to talk?”

“Not really, no,” Grantaire tells her.

“Too bad,” Cosette replies, not rudely, and sits in one of the chairs, waiting with an arched brow until he joins her. “See, the funny thing is, we know the same people, you and I. And I still have to fight off the things they told me, sometimes. I don’t know everything, but I know the look you’ve had on your face.”

“Those were very different situations,” he reminds her, but he’s hedging and he knows it. Sighing, he runs his fingers through his dark and tangled hair, slouches down, and studies her. “You were a kid, Cosette. Me, I hurt people. I did fucked up things. It’s not the same at all.”

She just stares at him, hard, and her gentle fall of harvest golden hair doesn’t soften her face in the least. “We all do what we have to in order to survive. Besides, my father spent twenty years in prison and the rest of his life on the run. I’m hardly going to judge you – don’t mention that to him, though, he still thinks I don’t know.”

Grantaire cocks a brow at her. “Then how do you know?”

Cosette shrugs. “Enjolras is a bad influence on me. I went digging. The point is, you might as well tell me about what’s weighing you down. I do pay attention to things, Grantaire.”

He is quiet for a moment, but she’s trusted him, and they’re friends. So he sighs, just a little huff of a sound.

“Fuck, Cosette.” He tries to think of where to even start, but he thinks she’s filled in most of the gaps herself. So he starts there. “I used to forge paintings for them. Fifteen to twenty one.”

Her eyes burn into him but she doesn’t give much away, she never does. Finally, she realizes he isn’t planning to share more and reaches over to take his hand, creamy tan against the ashy olive of his skin. “And now you don’t. That doesn’t define you, R.”

“It feels like it does,” he says, and tries not to remember the paved path to hell. “You know I can’t tell them, shit, they’d freak the fuck out. Understandably.”

“Or they’d hate the bastards – all of them – for putting you in a position where you had to,” she points out, tone reasonable. “Like I do.”

He snorts, gives her a look. “I enjoyed doing it.”

“You enjoyed the painting,” she says, still matter-of-factly, like she’s not twisting his world into strange and impossible shapes. “Not the rest of it, or you wouldn’t feel so guilty.”

Grantaire feels like shaking apart, but he sits there, lets her hold his hand and studies their contrasts.

She leans over after a long while and kisses his cheek. “We’re your friends and we love you. And this doesn’t change anything, not for me.”

It does, of course, but not in a way that he expects. She starts inviting him over more often, and they talk more, mostly about films and music but occasionally other things, and he would almost swear that Enjolras is more jealous than Marius. Éponine isn’t surprised at all when he eventually mentions the conversation off hand, and maybe that shouldn’t surprise him, since she and Cosette had made up a long time ago.

He flirts with Enjolras sometimes, still, a little, but there’s still a lingering hint of something between them. Grantaire can’t let himself hope, can’t let himself get too close, because one way or another it will end badly. Because, in the end, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to keep secrets from Enjolras. The only thing worse than Enjolras despising him would be Enjolras knowing he has lied.

But Enjolras is blissfully ignorant, and he graces Grantaire with a smile that somehow surpasses every moment of blistering indignation.

This is how you move on, spinning between friends and work and things that almost resemble hobbies. Grantaire doesn’t feel, so much, like he needs to fill up every moment of his day with noise not to fall apart. Some days he does and some he does not. He keeps a mental calendar full of notes and never lets on, but he lets himself appreciate, for now, what he has.

It’s not his birthday, of course it’s not, but Grantaire almost isn’t even surprised when he walks into Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta’s apartment on the pretense of movie night and instead finds all of them crammed in. The sparkle in his eyes says that Joly is responsible for this, but Grantaire takes it with a long suffering smile rather than crushing shame and anxiety, and lets them pull him in, because he knows this is partly just an excuse for them all to be together.

So for a night, he lets himself forget. He forgets fifteen years of resentment and disappointment, another eleven of fear and discomfort, and he talks about the latest pop-sci-fi movie with Combeferre, lets Bahorel seize him up in a hug, chats with Feuilly about the latest states of international politics, lets Musichetta ruffle his hair and kiss all over his face affectionately, and hides out on the balcony with Bossuet’s ill fated plants. Enjolras is the one who follows him and takes a seat on an upturned flowerpot, strangely lit in the light through the windows.

He looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t, only sits and keeps Grantaire company. He’s relieved, because he doesn’t want to ramble through his thoughts to his points, and he’s never had a moment like this, where he really appreciates the quiet lulls between Enjolras’ tides of righteousness. This, he could hold forever. So they sit in the silence of blue-black shadows, not quite touching, just sharing this strange space between them, and Grantaire is glad that, for once, Enjolras isn’t trying to fix things.

Three days later, Éponine is standing outside Grantaire’s building with her hair newly lightened auburn, and there’s a look on her face that only bodes trouble. It’s something stubborn and fierce, and it reminds him of the day they decided that yes, they were going to leave for Paris. He wordlessly accepts a cigarette and sits beside her on the fire escape, looking out over the street and imagining other ones that overlap in his memory.

“What’s on your mind, kid?” he asks her finally. And maybe that’s not fair, because she’s just three years younger, almost the same age as Enjolras and Cosette. Shit, when did he get so old?

She doesn’t comment on that, but she looks over, takes a drag and breathes the smoke out slowly. “I’m fucking done with being scared, R, and I’m done pining over the oblivious white boy dating one of my best friends. It’ll be coming up on six years, now, and we’ve still got shit to take back.”

He’s not sure what to make of that, so he asks.

Éponine leans forward, watches the curls of smoke from Grantaire’s mouth, and taps the ashes from her cigarette on the ironwork of the steps. “I’m saying that you should think about painting again.”

“ _Shit._ ” Grantaire nearly burns himself, twisting to look at her. “Éponine-”

“Shut up,” she snaps, but it’s not vitriolic. She sighs. “Just. Shit. It’s been years, you should do it for you. You should try. It’s not the same thing at all, Grantaire.”

For a long while, he is silent. He half thinks that it will come welling up out of him like poison, suffocating and extinguishing him, this fear and panic he has kept so long. But he just lights another cigarette and inhales.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, finally. “But only if you’ll think of letting Combeferre actually ask you out – I’ve seen the way you look at those forearm tattoos.”

“… Y’know,” Éponine says, like the sun is coming out from behind a cloud and lighting her up from behind. “I think I might.”

“Good.” Grantaire bumps their shoulders, gently, and thinks that maybe she has the right idea.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that he’s any less of a wreck when he borrows a canvas and some paints from a friend. He’s trying to remember how to breathe as he sets up in his tiny living room and hesitates, overwhelmed with it all as he looks blankly at the oils on the palette.

He is terrified. He wonders if he has forgotten how to make his own work, has lost its possibility in copying the paintings of others and there is a catalogue of styles still in his brain, and he doesn’t know if he can even paint at all, this many years later. But no one will know but him.

So Grantaire runs a brush through the paint and closes his eyes for a moment, and then he paints. The first line is tentative and ugly on the roughness of the canvas, so he dabs again and forces the brush against his first instinct of the curve, and then gives himself over to it. When he finally stops, hours later, he is staring at the ugliest thing he has ever painted.

It is grotesque, a hideous collection of awkward lines and colors and it’s gloriously free of anything but the fucked up trajectory of his brain. Grantaire sets the palette down, stares at the painting – a riot of oranges and purples and red-pinks – and he cries. He cries without realizing it, without feeling the shake of his shoulders or the ugly weight of them in his chest. He packs up and cleans up and leaves the painting to dry while he returns his friend’s equipment.

He goes out to buy his own.

When he walks into the Musain that night, Éponine sees the look in his eyes (there is nothing else to see, because he has scrupulously scoured every microcosm of pigment from his skin) and she nods at him – it’s not a beaming smile, but there’s a respect that runs deeper, and he thanks her for it all the more.

Grantaire feels alive, again, and it’s too much to even buckle under his insecurities, and his friends seem to notice. Joly and Bossuet clap his shoulders and tease him about what could be the cause, Cosette kisses his forehead with a knowing smile, and Enjolras looks at him like a deer in the headlights and then smiles, blue eyes (innumerable, unnamable shades) lightening with something like affection.

He’s out of practice, of course he is, and it takes him more time than he’d like to recapture the grace he once had, but it’s alright, because he remembers how to paint, how to brush himself onto the canvas and no one else, and that gives him more courage than anything else.

So maybe that explains how, when he’s over with Bossuet and Joly and Musichetta, he forgets to be afraid. He’s settled in on their couch, leaning against Bossuet’s side as the man cards his fingers though Grantaire’s hair. Joly’s sprawled out across their laps, all but purring like the cat that’s curled against his knees when Grantaire smoothes down his hair, and Musichetta is looking amused at the other end of the couch, where Joly’s cane is propped inconspicuously against the armrest. (Arranged in the right order, they would be a gradient of color, if Grantaire were to slip between Joly and Musichetta with Bossuet by her side.) He’s grateful for them, for letting him into this comfortable intimacy even as they tease him about Enjolras.

Hell, he thinks, he’s told them already that he used to be a drug addict, and he knows, already, their own darker secrets. They would never gossip about this. He hardly even thinks about it, as they watch some teen comedy, and opens his mouth.

“Was lycée really like this?” he asks, nodding at the screen without dislodging Bossuet’s fingers. “I mean, I really wouldn’t know.”

“Not really, I never had that many cute boys chasing after me,” Musichetta replies, shrugging, but her dark eyes are watching Grantaire’s face now, and Joly shifts enough to do the same, Bossuet still continuing his idle petting without pause. “Fancy private school?”

“Nah,” Grantaire says, and he loves them. “I ran away from home when I was fifteen. Never made it in.”

“Well, you didn’t miss much of anything,” Joly says dryly, but he snags Grantaire’s hand in his and squeezes. “I know you, you would have driven all of your instructors up the wall with your Catullus references and overdramatic deconstructions of Sartre.”

“Ah, Jolllly,” Grantaire sighs even as he squeezes back, “there’s no room for Catullus or Sartre in the science series, from what I’ve heard, and you know I’ve not a head for math.”

Bossuet nods, mock gravely, but he pulls Grantaire closer against his side. “It would be Bahorel all over again, but without the professors squawking over your questionable wardrobe choices.”

“Catullus suits you much better,” Musichetta agreed, reaching around to ruffle Grantaire’s hair. “And it would suit you even better still if you used it to cajole Monsieur Enjolras into your bed, my love.”

He laughs, relieved and embarrassed, cheeks flushing red. “A drop out for Monsieur Enjolras? Oh, I doubt it, after all he’s made over Feuilly’s self education, Catullus or no.”

Joly and Bossuet oblige him with a laugh, but Musichetta flicks his nose, making him blink. “I’ll take the spray bottle to you, R, don’t you think I won’t. Or haven’t you noticed that you easily keep pace with a handful of Paris’ brightest young minds? And that Enjolras has already bowed to the twists of your tongue?”

Grantaire turns red at that and waves it off, but he doesn’t argue further, lets them lavish him with affection without complaint. He doesn’t mention, yet, what he did in the time between then and when they crashed into his life, but this, he thinks, is a start, if they still think well of him. And better yet, they haven’t tried to turn him into a cause.

He mentions something to Bahorel, next, as they dress after boxing and he straps the holster of his knife back into place. “You know, I wasn’t making up bullshit when I told you I learned boxing on the streets.”

Bahorel just snorts and gives Grantaire a very unimpressed look, toweling water out of his hair, still shaved on one side. “No shit, R. You fight like it, you little fucker, and I don’t doubt you know how to use that knife intimately, too.”

“Should’ve known I wouldn’t get it past you,” he says, and he doesn’t complain when, as they walk out, Bahorel slings a burly arm around his shoulders.

“You know,” he tells Grantaire conversationally, “Enjolras isn’t going stop the weird flirting with you thing if you tell him. And, shit, you can ream him out next time houselessness comes up in the meetings and he’ll have to acquiesce to your greater experience.”

Grantaire snorts. “I don’t know if I should be honored or offended that’s where your mind went.”

“Honored,” Bahorel says. “I think it’s funny as fuck when you get the upper hand.”

And yeah, maybe it is. Grantaire is still a little uncertain as to why his friends still seem to think this would be a good idea, but, well, they don’t know the whole story – Cosette does, but really, she’s nearly as romantic as Jehan and in a worse way.

He’s still pleased, though, when Enjolras shows up at the end of Grantaire’s workday. “Go on a walk with me?”

The sky above Paris is clear and lovely, and Grantaire has nothing but the scent of drying oil paint at home, so he smiles. “Sure. Why not?”

Enjolras smiles at that, as though Grantaire has done something much bigger than agreed to take a walk, his pretty face resplendent as they start to wander down the street. It’s a lovely day, balmy and bright, and there’s almost no one else out as they turn into a nearby park and stroll idly under the dabbled shade of the trees, chatting about this and that.

“What are you doing this weekend?” Enjolras asks, and this is the first time he’s asked that when they haven’t had some sort of event or rally.

Grantaire shrugs, still surprised, looks up at Enjolras from the corner of his eyes, because he didn’t have plans, precisely. “I’ll probably go out drinking with Bossuet and Joly. If Bahorel joins us, Courfeyrac will probably come, and it will be just like a couple years ago and we’ll all wake up on Jehan’s floor with no idea how we got there and probably still drunk.”

Enjolras snorts, because he can tell (thankfully) that it’s a joke, but he tips his head a little, his brow furrowing just a little in a way that means something Grantaire’s said has caught his curiosity. “I’d almost forgotten you all used to do that.”

He shrugs again, reflexively and not quite twitchily. “Just because I’m an alcoholic doesn’t mean I can’t cut back a little.”

Maybe he’s misstepped, because Enjolras’ look goes a little strange, but his voice is even when he speaks, still simply curious, not judgmental. “I’ve never heard you describe yourself that way before. Have you ever thought about stopping? You know we’d all support you, if you did.”

This time, Grantaire laughs, and it comes out less bitter than he thought it might, so he smiles up at the other man before he can get that scrunched up, offended look. “Enjolras, I managed to kick one addiction. Drug withdrawal was hard enough, and so was quitting smoking, I don’t think I could handle going off alcohol, too.”

“You were - I mean, you did?” Enjolras asks, visibly surprised, but he’s not recoiling, at least. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, well.” Grantaire lets half of a smile turn the corner of his mouth, ignores the count of days screaming in his brain – it took a moment to remember, though, and that has to mean something. “The last relapse I had was back when I barely even knew you guys. I haven’t been keen to do it again.”

Enjolras just stares at him for a moment, and then his hand shoots out, grabbing Grantaire’s elbow. “Go out with me.”

Grantaire had frozen the moment Enjolras grabbed him, because it was that or let survival instincts kick in, and now he just blinks, confused and thrown, brow furrowing. “Wait, _what_? Is this because of what I just told you, because if you’re trying to turn me into one of your causes-”

“No,” Enjolras says, and he has the grace to look a little sheepish, red rising in his cheeks. “No, I wanted to ask you, that’s why I asked what your plans were, but you’re just - _Grantaire_ , you amaze me, you’re so unexpected, and I just… I wanted to ask you.”

This makes no sense, even if they have been talking, flirting, whatever this dance has been, and he’s still staring. But Enjolras, for all he can be cruel, would never do that to someone, and so Grantaire lets himself relax, and he smiles, and decides that maybe he’s allowed to leave the past behind. “Yes. Yeah, alright. I’d like that.”

Enjolras' whole face lights up at that, and he shifts, looking suddenly inquisitive as he slowly moves to take Grantaire's face in his hands, watching for any sign of dissent, and sighs very softly as he does. "May I?"

Grantaire grins at him, crooked and yellowish teeth and all, tries not to feel like there's a fire lighting up his nervous system at Enjolras' touch. "Yes."

And then Enjolras leans down and kisses him, and Grantaire leans into it, and it's soft and chaste and it's like the world crescendos with the beat of his heart, and they're both flushed when they break apart. For now, none of the rest matters.

Their hands find one another briefly as they walk, and they talk, and eventually Grantaire has to change before dance lessons and Enjolras has a meeting with Combeferre, so they split up, and Grantaire forgets, for the rest of the night, why this is going to be such a bad idea.

He works himself up about it, but Cosette pins him in place with her eyes, unimpressed, and tells him that she's told Enjolras to be gentle with him. Musichetta just kisses his forehead and wishes him good luck. He feels like his heart is in his throat when he tells Enjolras part of the truth, mentions briefly that he ran away from home, that he hasn't even finished secondary school, for fuck's sake.

But Enjolras just blinks at him, with this wide eyed stare like he's impressed, and Grantaire doesn't have the heart, after, to tell Enjolras what happened in the rest of those years, and Enjolras doesn't push, just tells Grantaire all the reasons this, of all things, doesn’t _matter_ because he’s brilliant. The date, when they go on it, is more than successful, and they're kicked out by the staff gently but firmly, having gotten caught up in one of their tangents again.

Their friends tease, and Cosette gives them both smug looks that they must deserve, and it's blissfully as peaceful as it ever gets. The city fits around them all like it always does, Paris ringing them in warmth, and Grantaire slowly fills up his apartment with paintings and sketches, but keeps them to himself, because he still can't bear to show a soul, doesn't dare.

Éponine swings by one day, one of their anniversaries, and they drink wine and nudge each other with their feet. She purses her mouth a little, her fingers twitching for a cigarette, when they've fallen quiet. "Things are working out with Combeferre. I think I might tell him a little."

"Fuck," Grantaire says, and sees just for a moment the little girl he met, barely even a teenager and still tougher than nails with her smudged cheekbones and dark eyes like a furnace. "Well, if anyone could take it well, it would be him."

"Maybe." She shrugs a little, swirls her glass. "Not much, I don't think. A little. Enough for him to understand some of the weirder stuff, but I'll leave you out of it as much as I can."

"Thanks, ‘Ponine," he replies, with a nod, still watching her. "You know you can always call, don't you?"

Éponine just looks at him. "R, I called you in the middle of the night a month ago. But we're finally getting over it. We've stopped running. The nightmares aren’t even half so bad, and we're finally realizing that everything we've ever been told might not be true."

"Look at us," Grantaire says, but it's with a smile. "We're almost like real people. I'm glad things are working out with him and that things are getting better."

"Me too." She is quiet a moment. "Are you still painting?"

He hums an agreement. "I am. A little, and only ever for me. Éponine, it won't go anywhere, not any time soon. Sometimes I still _miss_ it. And worse, sometimes I want to know if I could still fake out a dealer worth their salt."

"Jesus fuck, who cares?" She stares at him. "Grantaire, you were _brilliant_. Even when you were sixteen, you were amazing - no one could paint replications or imitations like you could. You're allowed to wonder if you still have it, if you could still do what you used to while fucked up beyond belief. I break into my goddamn apartment sometimes to see if I still can do it in under a minute and I had to stop myself from stealing something the other day."

"So, we're still fucked up," he sighs. "Yeah, alright, alright, you're right. I know we aren't ever going to go back to that. But... Hell, you know how it is. Or you wouldn't have mentioned Combeferre. He's a good guy, you know, and he's grounded - you don't have to worry about spinning out of control or being chained down with him."

Her dark eyes are a little sad as she smiles just a little. "That's where we get stuck, ain't it? Every time."

"Every time," Grantaire says. He can drink to that.

But they’re trying, and it must could for something. It must count for something because Grantaire’s stomach does little butterfly flips when Enjolras takes him out again and invites him home for the night. There’s been a surprising sweetness in their kisses, but this time there’s no hesitation, not with the way Enjolras’ hand had slipped into his back pocket on the way over.

“God,” Grantaire murmurs, fumbling the bedroom door open when they finally get inside and kick off their shoes, letting Enjolras steal another kiss as his fingers slide up to tangle in the blond curls. “You’re gorgeous.”

“Flattery gets you nowhere, R,” Enjolras says dryly, pressing Grantaire further into the room, mouth warm against his pulse. Grantaire just hums in response, tipping his head up, not even complaining when his knees hit the edge of the mattress and he lets himself fall backwards, pulling Enjolras with him.

And, oh, fuck, Enjolras lets out the most paralyzingly lovely sound when Grantaire draws him in for a long, drawn out kiss, and he almost forgets to move for a moment as Enjolras strips off their jackets. Grantaire sits up enough to shuck his shirt. He stops cold when he realizes Enjolras is staring at him and he suddenly remembers the pitted and knotted scars that mar his imperfect body.

But the sound Enjolras lets out isn’t one of disgust or disdain or even worry, but a soft, surprised intake of breath, and Grantaire suddenly realizes that he’s not looking at the scars a half second before Enjolras tosses his own shirt and pins Grantaire to the bed in a fluid move, mouth hot and wet against lines of ink, slender hands tightly gripping his hips.

Grunting as he’s thrown back, Grantaire’s head falls against the pillows, hands coming up to hold Enjolras’ shoulders just as tightly. He would complain about not getting to see the lithe sculpture of the taller man’s body if even the brief sight wasn’t burned behind his eyelids along with the preternatural grace with which he _moved_ and his mouth wasn’t burning a line over Grantaire’s skin.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Enjolras murmurs, biting at Grantaire’s hip briefly before looking up at him, blond hair half out of its ponytail and looking already wrecked, eyes dark and hungry. “This is alright?”

“Yes, yes, absolutely yes,” Grantaire says, mesmerized by just the way he _looks_. “Less clothing, though, yeah?”

Enjolras just hums an agreement, letting Grantaire work his pants off before returning the favor, not even _blinking_ at the knife because apparently he already knew it was there, and moans low in his throat when Grantaire sucks a line of bruises along his neck. Heat sparks, blossoms between them, Grantaire lost in the feel of Enjolras’ skin, his silk-soft curls, the sight of his face and shoulders flushed red, the line of script tattooed along his hip and _shit_ there’s another on his shoulder, a watercolor tattoo of an iris halfway to a fleur-de-lis, and it’s perfectly fitting.

But Enjolras, implausibly, impossibly, seems just as lost in Grantaire, kissing him back hard and hot and heavy, slim hands stroking the insides of Grantaire’s thighs almost reverently, making little hitching sounds of want when their hips slot together. His mouth finds a sensitive spot that makes Grantaire whimper, and he can feel Enjolras’ smirk against his skin as he fumbles a hand toward the nightstand for lube and it’s just moments before his hand his fitting around both their cocks, sliding together smoothly.

Grantaire lets out half gasps and swears, letting his rough hands wander over milky skin and scars, and Enjolras is pressing against his hands and then against him and then they’re kissing again, needy and wanting and desperately focusing all their attention on one another as much as they ever do when they argue and this, this is everything he could have ever wanted.

When they’re both breathless and boneless, Enjolras curls up around Grantaire, hums in hazy satisfaction and kisses his shoulder, and Grantaire feels weightless for the first time. And then-

“I didn’t know you had tattoos. Tell me about them?” Enjolras requests, his mouth just brushing Grantaire’s ear, and he almost flinches as the guilt rushes back in.

He wants to be able to reply, to tell him with bright eyes about the tiny details in Grantaire’s favorite paintings that inspired him to draw the designs, or the reasons behind the ones he’d come up with all on his own, but that just leads to the squirming, uncomfortable shame, and he tenses without thinking.

“You don’t have to,” Enjolras says, because of course he notices, and presses another kiss to Grantaire’s shoulder, delicate and affectionate. “But I do like them.”

“Thanks,” he manages, and relaxes into the comfort of Enjolras’ lithely muscled arm, kisses his palm and his wrist. “I just… thank you. I like yours, you know – the iris suits you well.”

“I thought you might like that one,” he comments, idly, and Grantaire can feel his smile against his skin.

In the morning, Enjolras makes him coffee and they eat warm bread smothered in butter and fruit, and Grantaire feels like singing all the way home. They get into an argument at the next night's meeting and he sulks and lets Joly pet his hair, but it's like the world has sharpened just a little, thrown into brilliant relief. He smiles at the smallest of things and the world doesn't feel quite so bleak and he dances with a lightness that he can't remember feeling in years.

But not even Enjolras can fill up the entirety of Grantaire's time, his attention, and so he spins through the streets, introducing Jehan to a patisserie that makes exquisite orange madelaines and balancing on railings as he walks and talking to Combeferre along the river and going boxing and he has a love affair with this city, with the beauty of Paris that hasn't yet worn off and likely never well.

And sometimes, he paints. He paints and it is a world away from the cramped little studio that he'd loved all the same, hunched over his canvas and working like each painting was a dissertation in and of itself. He paints and thinks about colors, not how to age them or to fake a touch up that would show under a black light or how to make it easy or impossible to clean.

But he gets so careless. He leaves a triptych out to dry, Paris rising with the sun and settling in the stunning colors of the sunset and the streets all lit up with light in the night, strung out along cafes and stretching into the dark. Grantaire forgets, because Cosette has called him for help with some odd task or another, and then he bumps into Enjolras and they go for lunch and decide to go back to his apartment.

Grantaire waves Enjolras off to the living room because he has fresh fruit picked up on a whim that needs to be put away and they could both probably use something to drink. It doesn't even cross his mind until he wanders back in and Enjolras looks up at him, mouth curving up in pleased surprise and his face _shining_ with admiration.

"Grantaire," he says, and the fondness is too much to bear. "You never mentioned that you painted. These are _beautiful_."

Because the only thing that Enjolras loves as much as freedom is this country, this city, and his friends. And he feels like there are ashes in his mouth as he shakes his head, can feel the start of an anxiety attack (there are names for those, another thing to thank Joly for telling him gently) crawling into the tiny spaces in his lungs. "No. They're just... dabbling, is all. I shouldn't."

"I know I'm not an expert," Enjolras says slowly, mouth slowly curving down and brow furrowing delicately as he turns intense, watching Grantaire closely, still not quite comprehending, "but these are so well done. This has to take a lot of talent."

And Grantaire closes his eyes, tries to appreciate what will surely be the last crumbs of praise, of affection, that he will earn, and sinks down on the couch. "That's not it. I... Look, I haven't exactly been honest with you."

That just makes Enjolras' brow draw even tighter, and he sits slowly beside Grantaire, studying him oh so very keenly. "What do you mean?"

"Right, story time with R," he says, because he's a sarcastic little shit when he doesn't know what else to do, and it's never gotten him killed before. "I told you that I ran away."

"You did," he agrees, nodding not-quite-tentatively. "May I ask why?"

Grantaire shrugs, but each breath burns with shame and fatigue and fear, because he's never told anyone this. "My father despised me because I have no head for math. I'm stupid, okay? I barely scraped by most of my classes and couldn't ever pay attention, and I was only ever a disappointment. And it all built up, and if I didn't leave I was going to kill myself because the science series would have burned up whatever I still had, and we fought one day. Badly. So I left."

It sounds ridiculous and immature when he says it that way. And maybe it was, but it was true. But Enjolras only looks concerned and a little righteous, almost reaching for Grantaire before he seems to realize this might not be the time for it. "But you _aren't_ unintelligent. Grantaire, you're _brilliant_. I know you don't do well in structured environments, so I can only imagine that classes were awful, but you're so smart, didn't they see that? How could they not see that?"

“That’s not the point,” he says, and it sounds a little weak even to his own ears, so he rushes on. “The point is, I left my little cushion of a privileged life and I had no idea what I was doing. I got out of town, yeah, but then it got cold and I didn’t have money or a place to sleep. I could have gone back, but I was too stubborn and too scared to turn myself in. I fell in with a little ragtag group of criminals...”

Enjolras seems like he wants to continue arguing the previous point, but he’s also angled toward Grantaire, his eyes almost tenderly concerned, listening intently. Which, shit, means he can’t just stop here.

He takes a fortifying breath and wishes he’d grabbed something alcoholic to drink before starting this conversation he still doesn’t want to have. “I started painting reproductions and imitations for them. Never anything too famous or popular, but it was enough to turn a tidy profit. I figured, hey, the only ones being cheated were the bourgeoisie, so it didn’t really matter too much, and I enjoyed it. A lot. It was fun, figuring out how to paint like someone else, to figure out how their brain and hands worked.”

Grantaire can’t bear to look at him, to see that esteem fade from his face, and stares at the treacherous lines of his hands as he sighs softly, continues.

“But nothing ever got better, and no one ever had enough to eat, and the winters were cold, and I’ve seen kids disappear overnight, and that was too much. I was still twenty-one before I left. And it took a while to realize how fucked up it was, how many people shit like that hurts even if it’s the ignorant privileged who get cheated most, but I still miss it sometimes, because I was _good_ at it, which is such a shitty reason to forge paintings.”

There’s a light touch to his knee, and when he glances up, Enjolras’ eyes have softened, but it’s with sorrow rather than pity, and he doesn’t know, quite, what to make of that, and he can’t puzzle it out.

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras says, and he doesn’t look so aloof like this, the quiet lines of grief softening his mouth and his hair an indistinct halo tumbling around his face. And then there’s a little bit of a shift, a touch of disquiet and realization in the angle of his eyebrows, and Grantaire braces himself. “That explains why you’re so skeptical of our goals, then. Why didn’t you say anything?”

His mouth thins to a hard line and his eyes burn, just a little, because he doesn’t want their pity or lenience. “I’m not a part of your dislocated abased, Enjolras. I didn’t want you _excusing_ my criticisms or my skepticism because of where I’ve lived.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, and there’s a touch of defensiveness, but then he quiets again, and Grantaire remembers Cosette’s words – “I told him to be gentle with you, R” – and wonders if Enjolras does as well. “We don’t do it to Feuilly, or to Bossuet, and we wouldn’t do that to you. I just… Why didn’t you tell us? Don’t you trust us?”

Grantaire tries to think of how to even answer that, because he _does_ , and he _loves_ them, but Enjolras shakes his head a moment later.

“No,” he says, hand tightening just a touch on Grantaire’s knee. “No, I’m sorry, that’s not fair to ask. I know you do. And none of it was done _at_ us, and it wasn’t about that, was it? I shouldn’t have asked. May I?”

Slowly, Grantaire nods, because he still doesn’t know what to make of this conversation. He spent years as Enjolras’ satellite and the man still sends him spinning with a glance. With that permission, Enjolras reaches over and tugs Grantaire against him fiercely despite the awkward angle, hand cradling the back of his head firmly as he buries his nose in his hair.

“I’m sorry for what’s happened to you,” Enjolras murmurs, barely loud enough for Grantaire to hear, but even in the uncharacteristic gentleness he can tell there’s a distant and icy fury as well – not at Grantaire, apparently, but the people in power and the systems that did this to him, and that’s so _Enjolras_ it nearly hurts. “And thank you for trusting me. Grantaire, R, how could I think any less of you? What other choice did you have?”

And he knows that a year ago, Enjolras might have suggested that there _was_ another choice, if only Grantaire had _asked_ , had _looked_ , but that was then and the world has become so very new, and he doesn’t even cry, just relaxes into his hold, clutching at the back of his shirt, and breathes, so very softly, so very slowly, lets himself sit quietly for a moment and take in the impossible feeling of Enjolras’ arms around him.

“I just don’t get you, sometimes,” he mumbles and can feel Enjolras’ soft sliver of laughter down to his bones.

“I think,” he tells Grantaire as they break apart, only for Enjolras to cup his face in his hands and kiss his forehead gently, “that you don’t give yourself enough credit, and that your paintings are beautiful, and you should keep doing them if they make you happy.”

He sighs, softly, because the kindness, the tenderness is almost too much, but he can see that it’s backed by the glint of conviction that ignite Enjolras’ eyes like tinder, so Grantaire just presses a kiss to the heel of his hand, and says, “Thank you.”

They stay like that a while longer, but it’s too much contact in the wake of a confession so earth shattering, so Grantaire excuses himself briefly, stepping out in the hall to leave Cosette a brief message (He will tell Éponine later, when he sees her tonight). There are a few more hours still, until the not-so-impromptu gathering for dinner, and that will be a welcome breath of normal.

When he turns and lets himself back into the apartment, Enjolras is looking at the oil paintings with all his intense and incredible focus, and it comes to Grantaire all at once. He will paint every one of them, some day, and he will paint Enjolras in all his fiery glory and this strange and soft domesticity, and Grantaire will not be ashamed.

For once, all of the numbers and the ghosts of brushstrokes leave his head, and he goes to steal a kiss.


End file.
